Hello folks! Dan here once again to bring you my 5th year "anniversary" blog!

Over the last 5 years i have done one of these blogs each year(except last) and done something different each time, this time i decided to dig up the different versions of my profile and give you a brief look at my experience over the last couple of years here on this site. Lets take a quick look!

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2006 was the year i signed up for this account, and i've been pretty much active on here ever since expect for a few periods here and there. The layout back then was extreamly different and the max avatar size you could have was 36x36 which was a real pain when trying to make them. As you can see in the image, the most notable features is that the emblems are all displayed and user navigation bar is up with the banner. This was pretty much my favorite layout.

Further on down the time line and we are in 2008. Avatars had been increased to 80x80 resolution the previous year and i had been inducted into the iMod phase on the moderation team. Not much had changed since 2006 except i was taking part in a lot more of the community features, joining the weekly streams such as On The Spot and helping out other users in the "Welcome Noobies" board which is now known as "How To GameSpot".

By E3 2008 i was a gMod and was pretty happy with everything on the site, until...

The 2008 GameSpot resdesign. I wasn't a fan on this layout when it first went live. The change most people were pretty miffed about was the removal of all your emblems on your profile page and the way everything seemed "compacted" on the page. Since then however, it's been revamped numerous times and refined to the version you are looking at right now. I'm pretty happy with how the layout is now, but it first couple of incarnations back in 2008 weren't great.

In 2010 the site had some slight changes with more to come such as "Fuse" and "Raptr" which allowed achievement tracking from PS3, X360, WoW an Steam. These features has been removed for the time being and Fuse has now become and social networking platform for gamers. By now many live streams and community features had been removed such as Button Mashing, Tournament TV and On The Spot which had now become a pre-recorded show called Today on the Spot. In a sense these changes had killed the community we had going because the disappearance of the ever so popular online chat room and competitive trivia game.

Many brilliant users who would post intresting blogs you would see each week the online chat eventually disappeared from the site and from memory. However...

By 2011 the site was once again in an updated form, the one you see now, and community features were once again at the forefront of the site and old content had made a return. With Synthia Weires now on the community team, active users of the site were treated to even more features and contests to get involved in and another familiar face to chat to in the GameSpot Game Nights and online chat.

On The Spot had made a return to its weekly live form and users once again began using the online chat room as they watched to express their views and join in with the fun. No longer hosted by Ryan Mac Donald who did a fantastic job in his run, On The Spot now has Chris Watters hosting the weekly online show and brought atmosphere from the older OTS shows along with him. Although the chatroom still has yet to attract the amount of users it once did, it still is a blast to join each week and sees out my Thursday nights! I'm happy to see the returned community focus and the return of our favorite weekly content to the site that thrives at bringing those features.

As we near the last quater of 2011, i can say that the GameSpot we have now is the closest to the GameSpot i knew when i joined in 2006. Ok so we might not have all those familiar faces that we use to know all those years ago, but those people moved on and some of us stayed, but it's those of us who stayed and those more recent to the site that make the community we have now and the community i'm happy to be apart of.

I'd like to thank Jody Robinson, Synthia Wieres, Ryan Mac Donald and Chris Watters for their contributions to the site and making me part of this great community. I'd also like to thank all the other staff for their input into the site, and of course all of you, the users who keep the site going strong and active

-Dan